Achieve Success by Ddentifying your Goal

Identifying and writing down your goal is the first step of setting and achieving your goal. When American singer and actress Demi Lavato was a teenager of 18 years old in 2010, she wrote on Twitter, ‘One day, I’m gonna sing the national anthem at a Super Bowl.’ Ten years later in 2020, she sang the national anthem at the 54th Super Bowl in front of millions of football fans. Later she shared the old tweet and wrote again on Twitter, ‘Dreams really do come true.’ Writing down your goal significantly increases your chances of achieving it because it makes your subconscious mind, that transforms thoughts into reality, know and become convinced that your goal is possible.

Identifying your goal is deciding on what you exactly want to be, do and have in your own life. In 1981, researchers Edwin Locke from the University of Maryland and Gary Lathan from the University of Toronto found that when people followed set specific goals, it led to higher performance 90 per cent of the time. Before this study, psychologist Dr. Lewis Terman of Stanford University in 1921 had conducted a long-term study that involved 1,500 children aged between 8 and 12 in California and investigated whether there was a relationship between intelligence and success.

After many years of following up these children until they were adults, he found that there was absolutely no relationship between intelligence and success. But wait, here comes his most fascinating finding. He also found that there was a strong relationship between identifying goals and success in any area of life. To get the most from your life, you should identify and write down your personal goal, the means of achieving it and your ability to adjust and persist until you succeed.

A goal is an aspiration, fixity of purpose or target at which you direct most of your attention and resources. It’s an intention that you choose to accomplish in your life. A person with a goal has a direction, extraordinary resilience and positive expectancy. Attempting to succeed in your life minus a goal is as challenging as attempting to hit a target in the dark. Your goal must be clear and specific to you.

Research shows that there is a strong relationship between writing down your goal and achieving it. In 2007, psychology professor Dr. Gail Mathews of the Dominican University in California studied the impact of writing down goals. She compared those who wrote down their goals with those who didn’t write them down. At the end of the study, she found that those who wrote down their goals were 42 percent more likely to achieve them than those who didn’t write them down. When you write down your goal, it increases the chances for you to be seeing and affirming it often so that your subconscious mind can quickly accept it and bring it to pass.

Writing down your goal works the same for individuals, groups, communities, organizations or countries. Brian Tracy writes, ‘When you take a paper and pen and write down your goals, you activate the Laws of Expectation, Attraction, and Correspondence simultaneously.’ Writing down your goal helps you to raise your own vibration to match that of your goal to attract it to you according to the Law of Vibration and Attraction that says “Like attracts like”. A goal is usually divided up into small and manageable sub-goals to increase the chances of achieving it. After you have identified and written down your goal, you should now create an action plan that will enable you to actually achieve it.

Your skill of identifying and writing down your own goal is one of the greatest assets that you can ever have to change your own life. Link it to your talent to work on it with joy and passion until you achieve it. For example, Viola Davis in high school identified her goal to become an actress that was connected to her talent. As a result, she was full of inner joy and passion to achieve it despite her tragic childhood. She says, ‘I can remember what it means to be in trauma, poverty and alcoholism. I can remember to be a child who was hungry. I can remember what it means to be a child who dreams and sees no physical manifestation of it. I could remember because I lived it.’ She continues, ‘I did everything for food. I sacrificed a childhood and grew up in immense shame. You’ve only to follow the thread of the hero path.’ Surprisingly, despite everything that she had gone through, Davis went on to become an award-winning actress, producer and the first African American to receive the Triple Crown of an Oscar, Emmy and Tony for acting.

In 2022, in an interview about how she came out of her poverty, she said, ‘I found something that I really, really loved to do and I did it constantly. I did it to the best of my ability. I rode that horse. What I had, when I didn’t have confidence even when I didn’t have self-love, was drive. You find the joy, and the joy stomps out all the pain. I am literally in shock I was able to achieve what I have, knowing my beginnings.’ If you connect your goal to your talent, you’ll always be under the drive and inspiration of your talent to do whatever it takes until you achieve it. Most self-made identify their goals that help them to get to where they want to be. They rely on their ambition and passion, hard work, education instead of schooling, self-discipline and resilience. A person with a goal has a great sense of mission and vision.

State your goal in positive language, the only language which your mind understands. Then, be willing to pay, any legal and moral price to achieve it. It means that even if you’re criticized from every angle, advance with your courage and self-confidence. Even if you meet any stumbling-block, of any size and type, advance with your courage and self-confidence. Walt Disney said, ‘All our dreams can come true, if we’ve the courage to pursue them.’ Going through life with your goal, is like going to a Shopping Mall with a list of things that you carefully select and need to buy; but going through life minus your goal, is like going to a Shopping Mall with only cash and a bunch of credit cards to swipe.

Identify and write down your goal.